华盛顿消息——科学家预测太阳正进入不同寻常的超长冬眠期。到2020年左右太阳黑子可能会消失数年，甚至几十年。但是科学家也说这没什么好担心的。太阳风暴活跃度与地球生命所需的阳光与温度没太大关系。活跃度较低的太阳通常更有益，因为它对卫星和电力系统的干扰更小。但同时这可能意味着全球会再变暖一点。这种现象原来也有过，并没有几个世纪那么远。“太阳周期可能要进入停顿期，有点像夏季的节目大放送将进入尾声。”美国新墨西哥州的一个太阳物理学会议上，国家太阳活动天文台副台长Frank Hill作为主要作者在一篇科学报告上说道。
 
Scientists don't know why the sun is going quiet. But all the signs are there.
Hill and colleagues based their prediction on three changes in the sun spotted by scientific teams: Weakening sunspots, fewer streams spewing from the poles of the sun's corona and a disappearing solar jet stream.

科学家们还不清楚太阳活动变缓的原因，但并不是无迹可寻。Hill及其同事组成的科研小组基于太阳黑子的黑子弱化、日冕离子流喷射减弱、太阳能急流的消失这三个变化作出了预测。
 
Those three cues show, "there's a good possibility that the sun could be going into some sort of state from which it takes a long time to recover," said Richard Altrock, an astrophysicist at the Air Force Research Laboratory and study co-author.

美国空军研究实验室的天体物理学家Richard Altrock也是此项研究的合作者之一，他解释说，这三种迹象表明“太阳很有可能从此进入一个需要很长时间才能恢复的状态”。
 
The prediction is specifically aimed at the solar cycle starting in 2020. Experts say the sun has already been unusually quiet for about four years with few sunspots — higher magnetic areas that appear as dark spots.

科学家特别指出下次太阳活动周期将在2020年开始，同时表示太阳活动异样平缓，太阳黑子（即太阳表面上磁场较高看起来像黑点的部分）的减少已经持续四年了，fanyitie.com翻译。
 
The enormous magnetic field of the sun dictates the solar cycle, which includes sunspots, solar wind and ejection of fast-moving particles that sometimes hit Earth. Every 22 years, the sun's magnetic field switches north and south, creating an 11-year sunspot cycle. At peak times, like 2001, there are sunspots every day and more frequent solar flares and storms that could disrupt satellites.

太阳表面的高能量磁场决定着太阳周期活动，包括太阳黑子，太阳风暴以及喷射出的常常可抵达地球的高速粒子。太阳上的南北极每二十二年对调一次，由此产生长 达十一年的太阳黑子周期。如2001年当太阳活动达到高峰时太阳黑子每天都有，而频繁的太阳风暴和耀斑可能会干扰卫星的正常运作。
 
Earlier this month, David Hathaway, NASA's top solar storm scientist, predicted that the current cycle, which started around 2009, will be the weakest in a century. Hathaway is not part of Tuesday's prediction.

本月初美国航空及太空总署的顶级太阳风暴科学家David Hathaway预测这次太阳黑子周期大约从2009年开始，将是一百年以来最弱的一次。Hathaway并没有参与周二的预测活动。
 
Altrock also thinks the current cycle won't have much solar activity. He tracks streamers from the solar corona, the sun's outer atmosphere seen during eclipses. The streamers normally get busy around the sun's poles a few years before peak solar storm activity. That "rush to the poles" would have happened by now, but it hasn't and there's no sign of it yet. That also means the cycle after that is uncertain, he said.

Altrock同样也认为此次周期中太阳活动不会太强烈。他目前在追踪观测日冕（即日食时我们看到的太阳的外层大气）中发射出的粒子流。Altrock 说，通常在太阳风暴达到高峰之前的几年，fanyitie.com翻译。这些粒子流会在太阳极地快速运转。这种“阳极冲撞”可能已经发生过，但目前还找不到发生过的迹象。这同样意味着其 后的太阳周期不能确定。
Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory, another study co-author, said sunspot magnetic fields have been steadily decreasing in strength since 1998. If they continue on the current pace, their magnetic fields will be too weak to become spots as of 2022 or so, he said.

来自国家太阳天文台的另一位合作者Matt Penn说，太阳黑子磁场的强度自1998年以来就在稳定的持续下降。如果以目前的速度继续这样下去，约2022年以后这些磁场可能就没有足够的能量产生黑子了。
 
Jet streams on the sun's surface and below are also early indicators of solar storm activity, and they haven't formed yet for the 2020 cycle. That indicates that there will be little or delayed activity in that cycle, said Hill, who tracks jet streams.

Hill一直追踪着这些粒子流，他解释说：太阳表面及内部的喷射粒子流早就预示了太阳风暴活动，然而这些粒子流还未形成2020年的太阳活动周期。这预示着这次的周期太阳活动要么不剧烈，要么会延迟。
 
"People shouldn't be scared of this," said David McComas, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, who wasn't part of the team. "This is about the magnetic field and the ionized gas coming out of the sun. It's a reduction in that, not the light and the heat."

“对此人们不必恐慌，”科学家David McComas说。他任职于圣安东尼奥的西南研究院，并不是此次研究小组的成员。“这只是太阳磁场和喷射出的电离气体减弱而已，与太阳的光和热无关。”
 
There are questions about what this means for Earth's climate. Three times in the past the regular 11-year solar cycle has gone on an extended vacation — at the same time as cool periods on Earth.

关于此次太阳活动周期对地球气候的影响有几点疑问。每11年为一个周期的太阳黑子活动曾有三次未如期而至，而这三次都导致地球气候的变冷。
 
Skeptics of man-made global warming from the burning of fossil fuels have often pointed to solar radiation as a possible cause of a warming Earth, but they are in the minority among scientists. The Earth has warmed as solar activity has decreased.

人为气候变暖说怀疑论者常常把全球变暖归咎于太阳辐射的增强而非化石燃料的过量使用，但很少有科学家认同这一点。地球虽然在变暖但是太阳活动却在减弱。
 
Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria, said there could be small temperature effects, but they are far weaker than the strength of man-made global warming from carbon dioxide and methane. He noted that in 2010, when solar activity was mostly absent, Earth tied for its hottest year in more than a century of record-keeping.

维多利亚大学的气候学家Andrew Weaver认为太阳活动可能会对地球的温度产生的一些影响，但那远不足于人类活动中释放的二氧化碳及甲烷等对全球暖化造成的影响。他指出在太阳活动甚微的2010年，地球遭遇了一个世纪以来最炎热的一年。
 
Hill and colleagues wouldn't discuss the effects of a quiet sun on temperature or global warming.
"If our predictions are true, we'll have a wonderful experiment that will determine whether the sun has any effect on global warming," Hill said.

Hill与他的同事不愿就微弱的太阳活动对地球温度或全球变暖现象（的影响）发表评论。“如果我们的预测没错的话，我们将开展一项了不起的实验证明太阳是否对全球变暖有影响。”Hill说道。fanyitie.com翻译。

供稿/翻译贴